Hacking ain't all bad.
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I will make one thing clear right now: Yes, I'm a hacker (a newbie at that). But I'm not a criminal.
When most people hear the word “hacker,” feelings of fear and dread are conjured and certain prejudices take hold. I am here to cut through the prejudice, the misconceptions, the stigmas and all that society has been practically force-fed by sensationalized news stories.
We are not criminals. This I cannot stress enough. We do not lust after your personal information, we do not covet your credit card number. No. In fact, we, in our own way, help protect you from those who would steal your critical data. How, you ask? Our constant tinkering is what drives the Internet itself.
As cliché as it sounds, much like Yin and Yang, hackers and cyber criminals are cut from the same cloth. The difference between hackers and actual cyber criminals however, is that our only crime is curiosity. We push the boundaries of this wonderful invention called the Internet that the entire world has come not only to endear itself to, but indeed, to depend upon.
While you surf your days away on Facebook, check your Gmail account and download music from iTunes, we work silently behind the scenes, independent of the companies and organizations who maintain such services, looking for ways to improve them. We write code and offer it up freely to the public, we publish security advisories to companies like Symantec and McAfee, we work at Fortune 500 companies, diligently testing the limits of the systems we helped create, so that you don't have to. And for the most part, we do it of our own accord, because for us, hacking is not just a hobby, it is part of who we are as people.
So, you might be asking yourself now...what does it take to be a hacker? What makes these guys and girls tick? The answer is simple: An insatiable lust for knowledge. Once you have that, the technical knowhow comes along in its own time. We are a class of people not afraid to push the big red shiny button that might break something...only, we want to push the rest of the buttons too, because we don't know what they do, and the only way we will ever know what they do, is, well, to push them and see what happens.
That may seem reckless, but our work is done from places that are generally far removed from the daily lives of others not in our fold. Within each and every one of us exists a certain (though to varying degrees) propensity for mischief. We can be practical jokers at heart, but do not misconstrue our mischievousness as malicious intimidation.
Related Links:
- My Favorite Hackers
- Social Networks Attract Criminal Organizations
- HowStuffWorks.com: Social Networking
- Cyber Army Hacks Twitter
Turning all the Web sites you read upside down for a couple minutes is not a crime, it's a joke. Having said that, such pranks do not portend any malicious activity on our part, and we are not necessarily out to constantly throw a proverbial banana peel in your path. If we wanted your information, we have the means of taking it.
So, in the name of Mitnick, Woz, Torvalds, RMS, Kaminsky, Solar, Capt. Crunch, Fyodor, Kitchen, Mubix and all those who have ever grepped through a tcpdump log, we reveal to you now our true nature and that which drives us, in a simple three-word piece of advice: "Trust your technolust." It's the “What would Jesus do?” philosophy of our world. And if you have read this article, and have found yourself inspired by it, or maybe have realized that we hackers are not what you once thought.
Ryan Draga lives in the suburbs of Toronto, Ontario, Canada and works as a system administrator for an insurance company, Kanetix, Ltd., and is also as a freelance IT/Information Security consultant under his own brand, Straylight Solutions. Visit his Web site, send a Twitter to @TuxOtaku or E-Mail at ryan.draga@tuxotaku.com.
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